Let me give you an example. Lets say now-a-days a movie ticket costs $10 (I know what you’re saying, “Where does he get his movie tickets for so cheap?”) and the record breaking weekend gross for the current hot movie is $150 million. About ten years ago, a movie ticket would have cost around $5. Let say ten years ago the then current hot movie’s record-breaking weekend gross was only $80 million. Now which one was more successful?
You might say that the movie from now was more successful because it made nearly twice the money that the movie from ten years ago made. This is fundamentally what Hollywood tells us. But do grosses really measure the success of a movie? Can the amount of money people pay for a ticket be the sole indicator for a movies success?
This is where I call shenanigans on Hollywood. I know Hollywood is all about making themselves look good. Whether it’s cosmetically or financially, they’re all jag-offs who for one reason or another can’t afford to not be “successful” (when referencing Hollywood style “success”, I like to use quotation marks. In a city where a man shoving his own fingers into his anus and affecting a funny voice can be granted a cartoon and a sequel with a bigger budget, the term “success” should be a lot more relative than it is.)
Think about this: If 20 people pay 10 dollars to see a movie, this movie made 200 dollars. What if 40 people paid 5 dollars to see a movie, this movie would also make 200 dollars. Let me ask you again, which movie is more successful? I’ve long been more interested in how many people saw your movie, not how much money they paid to see it.
Let me put this in a historical context. In 2005, the average movie ticket cost $6.41. The top domestic grosser for that year was Revenge of The Sith which made $380.263 million in that year. So how do we find out how many tickets were sold for Revenge of The Sith? (Let’s assume that 1 ticket = 1 person, even though there are nutballs, me included, who see a movie at the theatres more than once) It’s simple, divide the domestic gross by the average ticket price and you get: 59,323,400.94 tickets sold. That’s a lot of tickets. That’s almost 1 quarter of the population of the United States.
Now lets go back 15 years. The top domestic grosser for 1990 was Home Alone, it made $285.761 million that year. Almost $100 million less than Revenge of The Sith. The average ticket price was $4.22. So how many tickets were sold? 67,715,876.78 tickets. That’s 8,392,475.84 more tickets than Revenge of The Sith. So which was more successful? Even though Home Alone grossed significantly less than Revenge of The Sith, it’s quite obvious that many more people saw it.
Now I’m not naïve enough to think that how many tickets sold should be the sole decider of a movies success. Unlike one-sighted Hollywood, I realize that there are quite a few other things to consider, but if they want to make this about money, lets make it about money:
One of the top grossers of 2005 was Chronicles of Narnia, it made $291.710 million. It made $65.556 million its opening weekend, it premiered on 3,616 screens. That’s an average of $18,130 per screen. So how many people saw it per screen. Lets divide the per screen gross by the average ticket price ($6.41): 2828.39 tickets sold per screen. Sounds like a lot, no?
Now let’s look at the total gross of Chronicles of Narnia, $291.710 million. The movie had a budget of $200 million (not including marketing). So the movie only made $91.710 million domestically. In Hollywood, a movie is considered a “success” simply because it made more than it’s budget back, in this case, they’re right. Chronicles of Narnia was definitely a financial success.
So how can we scientifically measure how successful a movie was? Obviously a movie with a high budget will be seen on more screens than a movie with a lower budget. This is also true for ticket sales, high budget (for the most part) means more tickets. If we want to get down and dirty mathematical about it, this is how I propose one would measure a movie’s success:
NOTE: We’re going to stick with domestic success. Ticket prices and screen counts overseas are too varied and that information isn’t as widely available as the information concerning the domestic box office.
Now lets calculate what I call the Success Quotient:
First we have to determine how much money a movie made, in other words, the profit made off of a movie. Take the Total Domestic Gross of the movie (DG) minus the budget of the movie (B, marketing budget won’t be included, some marketing costs are covered by other companies, there’s no way to figure out how much was spent by the studio, unless you worked for the studio). Now you’ll only be working with profit. Then take the average number of screens it was on per week. (Add each weekly screen count, divide by number of weeks in theatres to get AS). Now take DG-B and divide that total by AS, you’ll get how much money the movie made per screen it was showed during its entire run. Then divide that number by average ticket price for the year the movie premiered in (ATP) and you’ll get an idea of how many people saw your movie per screen. Let me display this mathematically:
(DG-B)/AS)
ATP
Sound good? Let use some real numbers. We’ll use Revenge of The Sith, a movie that’s been called “successful” and successful.
Domestic Gross: $380,263,000
Budget: $115,000,000
Screens By Week: (3661, 3663, 3650, 3322, 2923, 2371, 1759, 1355, 988, 667,
429, 359, 300, 307, 268, 213, 166, 99, 49, 38, 27)
Weeks: 22
Average Screens: 1267.33
Average Ticket Price: $6.41
(380,263,000 – 115,000,000)/1267.33
6.41
So why do all these numbers matter? Domestic gross is how much money was made off of a movie. Budget is how much the studio spent to make the movie. You need to subtract the budget from the domestic gross to find out how profitable the movie was. The more money a studio spends on a movie, the more money the movie will make (for the most part). So by using only the profit made from a movie we can get a look at how financially successful a movie is. Higher profit = more people saw your movie. If a movie grosses under budget then that can hardly be considered a success.
First we have to determine how much money a movie made, in other words, the profit made off of a movie. Take the Total Domestic Gross of the movie (DG) minus the budget of the movie (B, marketing budget won’t be included, some marketing costs are covered by other companies, there’s no way to figure out how much was spent by the studio, unless you worked for the studio). Now you’ll only be working with profit. Then take the average number of screens it was on per week. (Add each weekly screen count, divide by number of weeks in theatres to get AS). Now take DG-B and divide that total by AS, you’ll get how much money the movie made per screen it was showed during its entire run. Then divide that number by average ticket price for the year the movie premiered in (ATP) and you’ll get an idea of how many people saw your movie per screen. Let me display this mathematically:
(DG-B)/AS)
ATP
Sound good? Let use some real numbers. We’ll use Revenge of The Sith, a movie that’s been called “successful” and successful.
Domestic Gross: $380,263,000
Budget: $115,000,000
Screens By Week: (3661, 3663, 3650, 3322, 2923, 2371, 1759, 1355, 988, 667,
429, 359, 300, 307, 268, 213, 166, 99, 49, 38, 27)
Weeks: 22
Average Screens: 1267.33
Average Ticket Price: $6.41
(380,263,000 – 115,000,000)/1267.33
6.41
So why do all these numbers matter? Domestic gross is how much money was made off of a movie. Budget is how much the studio spent to make the movie. You need to subtract the budget from the domestic gross to find out how profitable the movie was. The more money a studio spends on a movie, the more money the movie will make (for the most part). So by using only the profit made from a movie we can get a look at how financially successful a movie is. Higher profit = more people saw your movie. If a movie grosses under budget then that can hardly be considered a success.
You need the average number of screens a movie was shown on because movies with higher budgets will be shown on more screens. We need to divide the profit of a movie by the average number of screens to determine how much money was made per screen. A big budget Hollywood movie will be on more screens and be in theatres longer than a small independent movie. Since more screens means more money, a per screen average is the simplest way to compare the financial successes of movies.
Dividing the per screen average by the average price of a ticket sold during the year of the movies release will get rid of the “financial success” angle that Hollywood loves to use. Like I mentioned earlier, the more money you charge for a ticket, the more money you’ll make. It’s not about how much, it’s about how many.
So what was the Success Quotient of Revenge of The Sith? 32,653.44.
That means that nearly 33,000 tickets were sold per screen. That’s about 41,382,684.12 tickets sold against the profit of the movie. That’s $265,263,005.18 of profit.
I understand that a lot more goes into how successful a movie will end up being. There’s international box office, DVD Sales, Rental Sales, TV Sales and all other kinds of revenues. But, for the most part, a movies theatrical success domestically is fairly indicative of its success in other arenas. If a movie does well here in theatres, chances are it will do well overseas and on DVD (once again, for the most part).
This also doesn’t say anything about the quality of the content of the movie, i.e. is it a good movie? This merely measures how many people saw the movie, not how many people liked it.
I’m going to start compiling a list of the Success Quotient of as many movies as I can, of varied “success”. I’d like to include plenty of big budget movies, but I also can’t wait to start calculating the success quotient of smaller films.
I’m going to start compiling a list of the Success Quotient of as many movies as I can, of varied “success”. I’d like to include plenty of big budget movies, but I also can’t wait to start calculating the success quotient of smaller films.
There’s all kinds of information out there regarding everything I’ve discussed, but not every movie ever made has this kind of information associated with it, so if you have a suggestion, keep it recent.
All information for this article was gathered from 3 sources:
Budget and Gross information from:
The Internet Movie Database
All information for this article was gathered from 3 sources:
Budget and Gross information from:
The Internet Movie Database
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